Apple Beats HP and Dell in Customer Satisfaction, Study Finds

Apple customers were more satisfied with the outcome of tech-support calls than HP or Dell customers, according to a study from Vocalabs. For this reason, the firm reports, the Apple customers were more likely than Dell or HP customers to buy again from their respective manufacturers.

Of these consumers, 58 percent of Apple customers reported they were "very satisfied"
with the call, versus 46 percent of Dell customers and 43 percent of HP
customers. Only Apple, Dell and HP customers were included in the
survey, which lasted a year and ended May 31, 2009.

Vocalabs found that customers of all three manufacturers were generally
satisfied with the hold times they encountered, as well as their
ability to reach a tech support agent and the agent's professionalism.
However, there was larger difference in the numbers regarding whether
the tech problem had been resolved: 53 percent of Apple customers
reported that their problem had been fix during the call, versus 45
percent of Dell customers and 39 percent of HP customers.

Vocalabs reports that technical support can have a "profound and
lasting effect" on a customers' willingness to buy from a manufacturer
again, and that customer service has significant impacts on customer
satisfaction, loyalty and promotion. The researcher measured eight
ways, or "call factors," that it discovered to be areas in which
companies could control negatively or positively affecting a customer.

Of the call factors - no problems with the interactive voice response (IVR);
the ability to reach a person; whether it was easy to reach a person; a
reasonable wait time; no irrelevant steps; the agent was professional;
they could escalate help if needed; and the problem was solved -
Vocalabs found that issue resolution had the greatest impact on the
customer's call satisfaction.

Further, customers who stated they were "very satisfied" with the call
were 56 percent more likely to purchase again from the company than
customers who were "dissatisfied" with the call.

In other terms, 91 percent of customers who stated they were very
satisfied reported they intended to repurchase from the company, versus
34 of those who were dissatisfied with the call intended to purchase
again.

Vocalabs additionally found that satisfaction with the IVR had less of
an impact than satisfaction with the call or the agent, "possibly
because of lower consumer expectations with those systems," writes
Peter U. Leppik, Vocalabs CEO and author of the report.

Looking again more specifically at the three manufacturers, Vocalabs
asked customers three call-related satisfaction questions, the first
about their satisfaction with the call as a whole, another about their
satisfaction with the person who handled the call and the third about
their satisfaction with the IVR.

Regarding overall satisfaction, Apple again came out on top, with 58
percent of respondents saying they were very satisfied, versus 46
percent of Dell customers and 43 percent of HP.

More Apple customers were also satisfied with the agent they interacted
with, with 74 percent saying they were very satisfied, while 56 percent
of Dell customers reported the same and 49 percent of HP customers did.
(On the flipside, 7 percent of Apple customers were very dissatisfied
with the agent, versus 20 percent of Dell customers and 27 percent of
HP customers.)

The IVR drew strong responses, with 40 percent of Apple customers
saying they were very satisfied, though 31 percent saying they were
dissatisfied. 30 percent of Dell customers were very satisfied, while
33 percent were dissatisfied, and 31 percent of HP customers were very
satisfied, while 23 percent were dissatisfied.

According to Leppik, the most striking differences he found between the
three companies were in the percentage of callers whose tech issues
were resolved during the call, and those who felt there were no
irrelevant steps involved.

"In both of those call factors, Apple customers reported significantly more positive experiences on the call," writes Leppik.

"This explains why, in this survey, Apple customers are significantly
more satisfied with the outcome of the call than Dell or HP customers,
and therefore more satisfied with the company overall and more willing
to buy additional Apple products after the technical support
experience."

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.